day 5
Jason posted on June 23, 2008

Day 5: Wednesday, May 28 Tucumcari, NM – Sun City, AZ

Total Mileage: 634 miles

Today, we violated a universal rule of long-distance driving: though shall not eat dinner before sundown.

Well, maybe it’s not a universal rule of long-distance driving, but it’s certainly one of mine. You see, about two and a half years ago, I drove from Seattle to LA, alone and in a rented minivan. I was on "sabbatical" from work and was in Seattle for the Seahawks-Steelers Super Bowl and was planning on flying down to LA a day or two after the game. However, at the last minute I decided to cancel my flight and drive on down the gorgeous west coast of this great country.

It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, mostly because it was the first real taste of my future life as a homo drifter (editor’s note: homo is intentional and not the misspelling of hobo). But it did not come without its pitfalls. For one, Enterprise, from whom I rented the minivan (I wanted a car, but they didn’t have any left), never made it clear to me that I had to return the van to Seattle. When I returned the minivan to the local Enterprise in LA, I got a call from the Seattle Enterprise saying I had to bring the car all the way back up there. Long story short, I had to pay about a grand to get that settled and I will one day single-handedly destroy the Enterprise Corporation, even if it the last thing I do and it costs me my money, my life and my very soul. I’m not joking. Like, at all.

(Seriously. Please do not rent from Enterprise or support them in any way. You have my full permission to perform any sort of act of commercial-terrorism on them that you see fit, as long as you don’t harm anyone or get me in trouble. Godspeed.)

Another borderline disaster occurred on the first day of driving of this Seattle-LA trip. As night fell, I was speeding through the southern half of Oregon, rocking out and making great time, when I noticed that I was entering some mountainous terrain. It was dusk and I felt good, so rather than turn in with daylight left, I decided to keep on driving. Besides, the mountains were no more than big hills and there were hotels available just about every ten miles on the trip so far, so I could turn in any time I got tired. Onward and upward I went.

Big, big mistake. The speed with which the darkness descended on the evening was surpassed only by the sudden rise of the mountains - big, steep, regal, terrifying, "bring it, pussy" mountains - before me and my humble minivan. By this point, there was no turning back. I continued driving, gripping the wheel as we climbed up and into the mountains, telling myself I’d stop at the first hotel I’d find.

That hotel didn’t come for over two hours later. With nowhere to stop in sight - I was in the middle of a mountain range, for God’s sake - I drove on, just me and my minivan among the truckers, in the near total darkness, only feet away from the steep drop of these mountain roads. We’re talking movie-style shit: there was a guardrail six feet away from my minivan, and on the other side of the guardrail, was a descent that, as a city boy, I had never seen before - hundreds and hundreds of feet down a scraggly cliff. For someone who’s always thought he’s going to die a spectacular (read: spectacularly painful) death, this was not where I wanted to be - and I was duly horrified. Believe it or not, for as much as a pussy as I seem to be, I think I’m pretty unflappable when it comes to stressful situations; I’ve pitched to entertainment people with slightly less money than God but certainly more power than Him*, had a Philadelphia police officer draw his weapon on me (and my friends) as a kid, and even successfully ejaculated while getting fellated by a prostitute**, but this drive, those two hours in the dark driving on those windy mountain roads, was definitely the scariest moment of my life***.

[* Well, that worked out for me, didn't it? Looks like it's Hormel chili for dinner again tonight!]

[** If my future wife is reading this, this is a joke. Besides, as of four years ago, I'm totally clean. So there's that. Of course, the incident with the pro occurred approximately fifteen to eighteen hours ago, but that's really just semantics, isn't it?]

[*** If you still think I'm a pussy, read this. I'm talking about those same mountains.]

As a result, one thing I made abundantly clear when we started the Mulgrew Men Conquer America cross-country trip was that we should take as much advantage of the daylight as we possibly could. On the former trip, I had no idea there were mountains in southern Oregon (what am I, a fucking geologist?) and I was caught completely unprepared. I could have mapped out any potential mountains for our trip across America, but that seemed like a lot of work, something I am completely averse to. So instead, we agreed to follow the rule: drive as much as possible in the daylight, have dinner when it gets dark, and, if we’re feeling it, continue on for 30-60 minutes after that. There was no way that I was going to get caught driving in the dark through any mountains again.

But this plan was thwarted, like most plans, by Outback Steakhouse.

If my dad had it his way, he’d eat dinner every single night at Outback Steakhouse. Seriously, every single night. And he’d get the same thing: bloomin’ onion, Victoria filet well done, side salad with thousand island dressing, baked potato and two regular Pepsis.

When we pulled into Flagstaff, still 150 miles away from Sun City, our final destination for the day, I did not want to stop for dinner. It was about 6:30pm, which meant that if we kept on going, we could be in Sun City by nightfall, at which point we could stop to eat and for the rest of the night. But when the Outback sign loomed on the horizon, I should have known that my protestations would fall on deaf ears. In short order I was staring at a bloomin’ onion before my dad, him beaming at it like his newborn child (which he was about to dip in a thousand island-type sauce and eat).

We spent an hour at the Outback and were back on the road as the sun started going down. It was my turn to drive and, though usually I’d have no problem passing the buck to my dad after a meal, he had pulled a long shift right before dinner so I couldn’t in good conscience ask him to drive again. I also couldn’t ask my brother Dennis to drive because he drives very slowly and when he does he listens to Mars Volta albums that sound like pain in sonic form. So I was up.

Though apprehensive about driving at night, especially through the desert with its pitch-darkness, I felt ok. We only had a short stint to Sun City – by this point, 150 miles was nothing – and I could deal with darkness, just not mountains. But we were in the desert! I’d be fine in the desert and on this desert run and we’d be in Sun City in no time.

Except this wasn’t a desert run. For those of you like me who don’t live in nor have ever been to Arizona, here’s a nugget for you: THERE ARE MOUNTAINS IN ARIZONA. Big, steep, regal, terrifying, "bring it, pussy" mountains.

(Seriously, I had no idea about this. I mean, isn’t desert the opposite of mountains? What the fuck?)

Before we knew it, I was driving along in the increasing darkness, feeling the car rising and rising up and into the mountains (which, like those in Oregon, started out as merely hills). But I was doing ok; there was still some daylight left and c’mon – we’re in the desert. Deserts don’t have mountains. This was temporary and would soon pass.

Then it got darker. And then I saw this sign. Then it was all downhill – then uphill, then downhill, then uphill again, then downhill again – from there.

For the next two hours, I white-knuckle gripped the wheel, weaving slowly in and out of traffic on the mountain roads, hunched over the steering wheel, my face practically touching the windshield. There was a good deal of traffic, which I thought might make me more comfortable in a “We’re all in this together” kinda way. However, it made me even more anxious in a “If I’m going to hell, I’m taking all of you with me” way, as I navigated around big rigs doing 35 with their blinkers on and locals doing 75, most likely after having a few pops after work, now on their way home.

Making matters worse was that last time, I was alone. This meant that I was free to whimper and pray in peace while doing my mountain trek. Now however, I had my dad in the passenger seat and my brother in the back. Of the three, I am by far the least manly – and it’s not even close. My dad’s broken his neck and has been stabbed. He has seven herniated vertebrae in his neck and back and he can still beat up most bears. My brother was so obese as a child and then so fit as a teen that he wore the same belt he made his Communion in (in third grade) to his high school graduation (in twelfth grade); now he can probably bench press 300 pounds and got about a 229 on his LSATs. Then there’s me: no muscle tone to speak of, no great accomplishments save for a frigging website filled with jokes about how fat he is and how little his dick is, terrified of driving in the dark.

If there was ever a time to “man up” and prove that I’m not the bastard child of my mom and Elton John, this was it. I could legitimately feel the tension in the car between all three of us as we drove on these roads; casual conversation stopped and the car grew quiet, the mood slowly turning from family road trip to “my half-a-gay son is going to get us killed.”

I can’t say I succeeded with flying colors – I didn’t say “Watch this,” floor the gas pedal, and drive the car through flaming rings of fire, shooting at ninjas attacking the car, all the while getting head from some redheaded bimbo – but when after ninety or so minutes we pulled into a gas station at the bottom of the mountains, we were alive and in one piece (steering wheel soaked in my palm sweat notwithstanding). Though at one point I did point out, “This is why we should drive in the daylight as much as possible,” I gritted my teeth, took control of that gorgeous beast of a car, and guided us home, safe and sound.

Maybe this is why I think Sun City, AZ has the best tasting beer in America.

************************************************

day four
Jason posted on June 20, 2008

Day 4: Tuesday, May 27      Maumelle, AR – Tucumcari, NM
Total Mileage: 694 miles

Having driven only 600+ miles the past two days, this morning we made a decision: no more fucking around. 

And boy, we weren’t joking.  Maybe it’s because I’m out of driving shape (and general physical shape, for that matter), but today was a true test - staring at the odometer, pouring on the miles, racing through Arkansas and then Oklahoma and then Texas and finally New Mexico.  A four state run - and not a shitty four state run like PA-NJ-NY-CT, which you can pretty much walk - in one day.  Holy shitballs.

The reason for this sense of urgency is that my brother needs to fly out of LA on Friday night to return to Philly for a bachelor party.  And while originally we planned to arrive in LA on Friday (Dennis doesn’t have to fly out until 10:30pm), the more we thought about it, the more it might be nice to have a day to spend in LA without rushing to get him on a plane.  So we changed our ETA from Friday and are now aiming for Thursday.  Thus, four states and nearly 700 miles in one day.  Considering professional truck drivers drive between 600-800 miles a day, 700 miles is not too bad for a bunch of pasty white guys who have seldom traveled west of West Philly.

Today we reached another important travel milestone: the comfortable silence.  The first few days we felt the need to make small talk or listen to the radio or otherwise occupy ourselves with something other than driving or sitting.  But no more.  There was a 2.5 hour stretch that my dad drove while my brother slept in the backseat where he and I didn’t say a single word.  Didn’t turn on the radio.  Hell, I don’t even think I thought anything during this time.  And this wasn’t road weariness or negative in any way; I was totally ok with it.

Because today was such a blur of miles and road, only two notable things to report:

1) 500+ miles in, just as night fell, we stopped for dinner in Amarillo, Texas at the famed Big Texan Steak Ranch.  Conservatively two dozen of you guys wrote in recommending this as a near-mandatory stop along I-40, the road we’re taking for approximately 44,132 miles.  But you needn’t tell me stop at something called the "Big Texan Steak Ranch", which was the inspiration for the restaurant in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Great Outdoors, staring the gone-too-soon John Candy.

(Actually, I’m not entirely sure the Big Texan was the inspiration for the restaurant in the movie, because in the film John Candy attempts to eat the old 96er, a 96oz steak, whereas the Big Texan’s steak is "merely" 72oz.  So maybe there’s a place that offers a free, if eaten completely, 96oz steak.  Whatever.) 

Despite a month-long stint with vegetarianism undertaken only to prove friends wrong, I am a celebrated meateater who’s had many poems and songs (odes, really) written about his love of meat (seriously, google it).  As the Town Car pulled into the parking lot, I felt confident about my chances, ready to dance.  

That is, until we walked into the restaurant.

Just as you walk up to the area to be seated, there before you in a glass case sit a cellophane-wrapped plate with the 72oz steak on it.  "Steak" is not really the word to describe it; "section" or "mass" or "shelf" is probably better.  I’m 6′1" and about 210 pounds - not gigantic, but not small by any measure.  This steak, the shelf of warm red meat, was larger than the mass that is my stomach.  Honestly, if you "scalped" my stomach, shaved it down, covered it butter and grilled it, it would still be smaller than this steak.

(Is anyone else hard?)

So that was all it took for me to say "No thanks" and pass on the challenge.  But as we were seated, I was given another reason to say no.  If you want to try to eat the 72 ouncer, you have to sit by yourself at a raised table in the middle of the large restaurant, with a giant clock counting down from one hour (the time limit in which to eat the steak).  If I could have attempted it quietly at my table, I possibly would have given it the old college try.  But there was no way, after sitting in a car for nine hours, my fat ass was going to sit in the middle of the restaurant while everyone looked at the fat guy with the beard eating the steak.  Good lord.  Up until three years ago, when I finally became rich, I didn’t eat at all in front of women, and to this day I won’t touch a buffalo wing or go anywhere near a ham if a woman is around, because of self-esteem issues related to my weight and unkemptness.  And you think I’m gonna eat a 4.5 pound slab of meat in front of a 100 people like the goddamn marshall of the fat chops parade?  No thanks.

(Incidentally, the food was pretty solid.  Unable to decide, I got a bbq combo with ribs, sausage and beef, whereas my dad and brother got steaks.  Nothing spectacular, but reasonably priced, very filling, and I didn’t immediately shit myself.  What more can you ask for in a restaurant in Texas?)

2) For all of you who wrote in to encourage us to stop at the restaurant, there’s one thing that none of you mentioned.  After leaving Amarillo, heading west on I-40, there is nothing for a long, long time.  After dinner, at which my brother and I had beers, my dad said he’d drive for another 30 minutes or so before stopping for the night.  It took us another nearly two hours before we found a hotel, and by that time we had crossed state lines into New Mexico.  It wasn’t a bad drive - the land was flat, the road well-lit, and there were many other cars around us - but we were surprised at the sheer desolation when we were seemingly coming across hotels every 20 minutes up until this very stretch of the drive.     

So my advice: stay the night in Amarillo.  Get drunk at the ranch.  Possibly hit it up for breakfast the next day (the offer some sort of breakfast buffet that I can’t begin to contemplate, lest I repeatedly and continuously pee my pants, resulting in my death).         

Tomorrow, another 600+ miles.  Bring it on. 

day three
Jason posted on June 13, 2008

Day 3: Monday, May 26       Nashville, TN – Maumelle, AR
Original Departure Time: 12:00pm
Actual Departure Time: 1:30pm
Total Mileage: 358 miles

The amount of cigarettes that my father smokes is astonishing.  It’s incredible.  And when I say “incredible” I mean it in the most literal sense of the word – not believable.  After spending three full days with him, I would guess that he spends 35% to 40% of his not-unconscious time smoking cigarettes.  If it were not for restrictions in hotels and restaurants, I have little doubt that this number would rise to around 80%.  If it were not for restrictions such as real life, my dad would drive a cigarette car, live in a cigarette house, and marry a cigarette woman.  Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes.    

Certainly, while in the car, he is smoking over 90% of the time.  In a way, it’s so impressive that it’s hard to be mad.  It seems like he’ll finish a cigarette, count to 100, then light another.  Repeat.  Like, sixty times a day.  Every day.  On and on and on. Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes.

While not a medical doctor, I cannot comprehend how a human being could inhale so much cigarette smoke over such a consistent basis and be able to actually live, let alone eat and drive and converse.  I have probably smoked five cigarettes in my life, most of them at strip clubs (back when you could smoke in strip clubs) out of nervousness and fear of boobies.  If I were to challenge my dad to some sort of smoke-off in which we’d go cigarette for cigarette, I would be dead in fifteen hours.  And this trip is not some smoke binge for my dad – he’s smoked two packs of Marlboro Reds a day since he was 12.    

I think it’s because I grew up with him smoking so much that I now despise smoking.  I just don’t understand it, how someone can regularly put something that is essentially tar-flavored poison into their body – and become addicted to it (and yes, I know booze is poison too, but at least when you’re putting that into your body you’re getting better-looking, more charming, and much more likely to wake up with a semi-naked and ashamed lady next to you; all you get with cigarettes is yellow teeth and yellow fingers and a tremendously off-putting scent similar to a garage in your mouth, skin, hair and clothes).  In a woman, I find cigarette smoking the second most undesirable characteristic after having a penis.  I once casually dated a girl who, in the middle of making out with me, would stop to take cigarette breaks.  Provided, making out with me is a stressful experience for anyone and I’m sure the whole time we kissed she thought and hoped and prayed for that cigarette until she couldn’t take it anymore.  I did notice that on these breaks she’d shake while smoking, puff hard on her cigarette, and they say, “OK – I’m ready” before continuing with the unenviable task of making out with me.  But still.  Not cool.       

Today, the cigarettes got to me.  After last night’s looooong night in Nashville, both my brother and I were very hungover.  Making matters worse, once we checked out of the hotel we drove to a nearby Cracker Barrel for breakfast, where I got the “Country Boy Breakfast” – a big slab of ham, eggs, home fries, grits and sausage gravy and biscuits.  I could have saved the effort for all parties involved and immediately walked my plate into the bathroom and dumped it into the toilet, and then punched myself in the stomach three times.  I had to stop to poop twice, and neither time was it a measured “Hey, let’s grab the next rest stop – no rush” but rather “Things are happening near my butt and they may happen to the car, so we should stop – now.”   

And the weather did not cooperate.   We had hopes of a high mileage day, but had to cut our drive short because it started raining sheets in Arkansas, heavy, deadfall rain hitting the car with such vehemence that it nearly shook the Lincoln.  This rain and the fact that we’re spending seven hours a day driving 70+ miles per hour is now causing the cloth top of the Town Car to start to peel off.  We attached three yellow cargo tie-downs (“the ratcheting strap-kind”) over the roof and through the car to hold the cloth top on.  The car now looks like some giant bumblebee.  Or just a hooptie.  Whatever.

We pulled off of I-40 in a random Arkansas town called Maumelle to grab dinner and wait out the rain.  We ate at a “sports tavern” called Razorback Pizza (which was actually quite delicious, in an Arkansas kinda way) but the rain did not cooperate and kept coming down.  So we called it a night.

So the hangover, the pooping, the weather, and, of course, the cigarettes.  Not my favorite day, but when you want to party in Nashville and eat the “Country Boy Breakfast” and drive a cloth top car in the rain and at high speeds, you have to pay the piper.  The cigarettes, I could live without. 

(Until, of course, I’m addicted to them by the end of this trip.  As a matter of fact, I kinda want one right now.)        

day two
Jason posted on June 12, 2008

Day 2: Sunday, May 25       Abingdon, VA – Nashville, TN
Original Departure Time: 10:00am
Adjusted Departure Time: 11:00am
Actual Departure Time: 1:08pm
Total Mileage: 303 miles

Nashville.  Wow.

In a way, I feel kinda bad – so many of you guys wrote in with so many good suggestions for the city, that as we drove in, I was armed with a folder full of emails, your hints, suggestions and places to go highlighted on the pages, ready to be used to attack the city.  However, in the long run, we wound up spending six hours on one block, the last two hours of which I can tell you about only in one word: Wendy’s.  Or maybe three words: Wendy’s. For real.

But we’ll get to that.  Last night, probably because it was the Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend, we had a difficult time finding a hotel.  I don’t know if Abington, VA is a hotbed of activity over the holiday, but we used the Garmin to call several hotels before finding one with room, a hotel that no doubt has been featured in an episode of “The First 48” or “Unsolved Mysteries” at some point in its existence.  If I closed my eyes hard enough, I could practically see the mustachioed homicide detective leaning over the stabbed body of the middle-aged crackhead between the beds.    

Because I was the most pro-Nashville of the three of us and wanted to make Nashville as enjoyable and painless as possible, I booked a hotel in advance for us, a nice Marriott (with a pool!) near Vanderbilt.  I figured a little splurging was in order, despite the impending hefty fine for my dad’s reckless driving ticket, to celebrate our first real, touristy stop on the tour.  And splurging it was, since I had to book two rooms.  As we did last night, for the duration of this trip, my brother and I will be sharing a room while my dad will get his own.  This is both out of respect for my dad as the elder of the group, but also a practical matter. 

You see, my dad occasionally yells in his sleep.  A few weeks ago when I was home in Philly, I had come in from a night out drinking and was taking a piss upstairs in the bathroom next to my dad’s bedroom.  It was then that I heard yelling, his yelling, gibberish floating out from whatever dream (or nightmare) he was having.  I’ve heard this before and it always happens the same: I’m drunk, taking a piss; I hear him yelling in his sleep; it subsides; the next day I ask him about it and he has no idea; four hours later he says, “You know what? I did have a nightmare last night.”  So hearing it on this night two weeks ago didn’t disturb me, but being in the same room as a 50-something 250 pound man while he’s yelling in his sleep is not something I’m interested in.  Thanks, though.

(Speaking of thanks, I’d like to thank both my dad and God.  For all the good traits that my dad and Jesus could have passed down to me – toughness, great mustache, calmness, not being scared of bugs and lightening, not being mezzofinook, etc – I get night terrors, as evinced by the night a few months ago when I awoke, thought I saw someone in my room, and jumped out of bed to tackle this person – only to slam myself into my closet.  So thanks for that.  I don’t need a mustache anyway, I guess.)

En route to Nashville, I texted my buddy Tom.  I went to BC with Tom, where his exploits were so magnificent that I dare not write about them, lest I melt your brain and computer (not to mention get Tom immediately fired and make him permanently unmarriable).  Tom now lives in the San Fran area, but spent two years in Knoxville and many a weekend in Nashville – and yet I forgot to ask him for suggestions about the city.  So about 100 miles away from Music City, I shot him a random text looking for advice.  He called me back immediately, saying that he happened to be in Knoxville that weekend visiting his lady and suggesting we meet up in Nashville for a night.

Now I realize that I say this as someone who experienced Nashville for the first time – someone who, when he asked his friends for suggestions for the city, specifically said he wanted the tourist experience – but Nashville was awesome.  Four reasons:

1) The women.  Good lord – I have to date a Southern woman.  This is something that just has to happen, even if for a little while.  They are the perfect antidote to the bicoastal blues.  I’ve spent the past few months being intimidated by women in NYC (because of their coolness/aloofness) and women in LA (because of their bronzeness and the plastic in their boobies) and here are the women of the South, smiling, saying hello, chatting up the tourists from out of town, the two brothers driving cross-country with their dad, sipping their beers, smiling right on back.  Just a lovely collection of ladies in those Nashville bars.  I’d have to check on this, but I think it’s the first time I’ve ever talked to a woman in a bar without knowing she’s looking at me thinking, “So this guy obviously wants to fuck me. How should I go about toying with him/crushing his self-esteem before I go fuck someone better-looking/richer/more fit/on the Clippers?”  Instead, we were treated to some good ol’ fashioned friendliness from the opposite sex.  Just lovely, lovely, lovely. 

Between Hillary’s run and the “Sex and the City” movie, I feel like all the women in my life have turned it up to 11 in the empowerment/aggression/in-your-face-you-go-girl-fish-needs-a-bicycle department.  And while I’m all for women going out and getting it – I’ve openly stated on several occasions that I’m looking for a woman who’s both smarter than me and makes more than I do, mostly so I can take up smoking and start to gain weight professionally – sometimes you just want a nice, easygoing smile with your beer at the bar, you know? 

So a Southern woman.  I’ll take one, please.   

[I’ve actually semi-dated two Southern women in the past.  One of whom I met at just about the worst time in my life, when I was more concerned with things like seeing how many beers I could drink without getting up from the couch to piss than with, like, girls and stuff.  The other was much younger than me and once sent me a text message confusing “right” and “write.”  I don’t recall exactly what it was, but it was on the level of “thats write!”  Not the best way to get into Uncle Jason’s pants, since half my text messages contain semicolons and paragraph breaks.  But she ultimately won because she later blew me off in such a spectacular fashion that once the statute of limitations expires, I’ll surely write about it.  Not my finest moment.  Not at all.]

[And no, “much younger” does not mean eight.  Just wanted to clarify.]

2) The cost.  We went to dinner at some BBQ joint before hitting the bars.  There were five of us – the three Mulgrews, Tom, and his lady, Kimberly.  We each got an appetizer and main course and had maybe ten or twelve beers and another few cokes.  The dinner, with tip included, was less than $200.  $40 a person for all that food.  I’ve ordered a goddamn cheeseburger and Manhattan for more than $40 in NYC.  And even if I did it every day for the rest of my life, after coming of age socially in NYC, I will never get used to paying under $4 for a beer in a bar.  Every time I ordered a round, I’d have $60 ready in my hand for our five drinks.  And each time the bartender said “$21” or whatever, I’d reflexively look at the drinks she’d be putting on the bar before me to make sure everything was included.  It just does not compute.  It’s like kissing a girl for the first few times; you’re tentative, unsure if what you’re doing is right, more than slightly confused – but you realize you’re onto something good.  And you want to do it again and again.  I’m still in the “confused” part of my development – coincidentally, the same stage I’m still in with the kissing – but it will hopefully pass soon.  Because I sure like it.

3) The dudes.  (Bear with me)  All I’m saying is that it’s nice to stand at the bar waiting for a drink and not have to compete with some meathead muscling you out and stinking like Drakkar and his girlfriend’s vag, which he fingered on the way into the city on the LIRR.  Again, a simple “how you doing?” really goes a long way. 

4) The vibe.  No pretension here, among the drinkers at least, who were there to listen to music and get drunk.  If everyone wanted the same thing when they went out and acted accordingly, the world would be a much nicer place.

And that’s about all I can say about Nashville.  My brother, who is four years younger than me and still very much in his shot phase – not to mention in much better shape than I am – went on some sort of shot-ordering mission toward the end of the night and I vaguely remember the last hour or so, and then leaving and hitting Wendy’s.  I vividly remember waking up this morning with a fairly significant hangover and finding a slew of hamburger wrappers on the side of my bed.  There was also an empty chili container, which makes sense, since Wendy’s chili is among my top twenty favorite things of earth.  There were, however, no cracker wrappers to be found, and since I consider crackers absolutely necessary for Wendy’s chili, I can only surmise that I put the crackers, wrapper and all, in the chili and consumed them that way.  I’m 90% confident this happened.    

Westward, we go. 

day one
Jason posted on June 9, 2008

(Over the next few days, I’ll be recapping the trip my dad, brother and I took across America.  If you’re more into pictures than words, you can pretty much get the idea here.  Most of these were written either the day of travel or the next morning, but I needed to clean them up.  Also, I’ve just completed my first week out here in LA, so I needed time to get my shit together and ponder the decision I’ve made, which makes me want to punch myself in the face.  Hard.  Anyway, this is the first in the series.)

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines – the Mulgrew Men Conquer America tour is underway. 

To refresh, here’s our deal: My dad, brother and I are driving from Philly to Los Angeles.  We are leaving Saturday, May 24, and need to arrive by Friday night, May 30, because my brother’s catching a plane that night back to Philly for a bachelor party.  En route, we’re stopping in Nashville (to get drunk) and Sun City, Arizona (to visit relatives).  The whole trip is about 2850 miles, which we have seven days to do.  Joy. 

Our vehicle of choice for this trip is a 1996 black Lincoln Town Car.  It is easily the largest car I’ve ever driven and if you’re looking for a new car and want something resembling a Hearse but without the whole carrying-dead-people stigma, then this car would be perfect for you (the cloth top really adds the extra funereal touch).  Not only is it a tank that reminds people of death, but the gas mileage for the car is less than ideal, to the tune of 11mpg in the city and 20mpg on the highway; I will spend more on gas alone on this trip than I’ve spent on any vacation I’ve ever taken.  Finally, upon moving to and settling into Los Angeles, this will be my everyday vehicle.  So in a city where what you drive says everything about you, mine says, “I’m going to kill you and throw you in the trunk – or give you a ride to LAX. Whichever, really.” 

(The car does not have a nickname yet, but I imagine it will.  The only other car I’ve ever “owned” – a gold 1984 Mercury Lynx that was only slightly larger than my body and seated .8 comfortably and did not have a working speedometer – was nicknamed “Lucy” for reasons that escape me now.  However, this was in high school and I did a lot of weird, unexplainable things in high school, for example growing my hair long and trying to gain enough weight to hit 240 pounds in order to win a bet with my dad.  Remarkably, I was a virgin in high school.  Seriously.  I can’t believe it either, but it’s true.)        

For a little background, here are some short profiles of the main participants of the MMCA Tour: 

Name: Dennis Mulgrew, Sr.
Age: 52
Occupation: Nothing (former mechanic and longshoreman)
Likes: Cigarettes, weapons, peeing
Dislikes: Not smoking

Name: Jason Mulgrew
Age: 28
Occupation: Senior Business Development Analyst
Likes: Comfortable beds, long showers, cleanliness
Dislikes: Wildlife, ruggedness

Name: Dennis Mulgrew, Jr.
Age: 25
Occupation: Future law student
Likes:  Napping, fitness, Spanish
Dislikes: Pretty much anything that’s not napping, fitness or Spanish

Now that you’ve been reintroduced to our main participants, let’s back-track a little.  Prior to going on this trip, I had two concerns:

1) I was fairly certain that my dad was going to bring a handgun on this trip.  I wrote about this before so I won’t go into it in great detail again, but basically he wanted the handgun both for protection and in case he wanted to get out of the car at various points of the trip to shoot things (i.e. cactuses, small rodents, big rocks and shit, etc).  It took quite a bit of effort, but my brother and I were able to haggle him down from handgun to pretty big knife (we were stuck on “really big” for two days) and a club.  Our basic argument was that if he brought the gun on the trip, how could he get it back?  He couldn’t bring it on the plane back to Philly (lie: I think you can pack an unloaded gun in your checked baggage), nor could you walk into FedEx and have it shipped back to you (I think this is a lie, too).  So before we even started the engine, we knew we were traveling handgun-less.  I love it when people compromise.     

2) I was concerned that my dad would stop every forty miles to pee.  The last time my dad drove me to NYC (from Philly) about three weeks ago, he peed before we left, peed twice on the drive up, and then was practically kicking down my apartment door to pee once we arrived in NYC.  The drive was completely free of traffic and took about two hours, so he went to the bathroom four times in roughly two and half hours, for an average of one piss every 37.5 minutes of travel.  This is not a good average when you’re expecting to spend twelve hours a day in the car for the next six days.  However, he is still my dad, and while I’ve been subtly suggesting some sort of funnel and Gatorade bottle apparatus, if the man wants to stop to pee every forty miles, we’ve got to stop the car every forty miles.  This obstacle we’ll have to deal with as it comes.         

Day 1: Saturday, May 24     Philadelphia, PA – Abingdon, VA
Original Departure Time: 10:00am
Adjusted Departure Time: 11:00am
Actual Departure Time: 1:08pm
Total Distance Traveled: 499 miles

The egregiously late start time was my fault (mostly).  I got in to Philly very late the previous night after working until 8pm on the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, which was great, and then throwing out nearly everything in my apartment and leaving the rest in my hallway with a sign that says “Free – Moved Out of Country.”  I caught the last train out of Philly and got in just before 1am.  Knowing it would be my last one for some time, I got a cheesesteak, which had such a sedative effect on me that it might as well have been a giant, gooey Ambein.  I set my alarm for 9am, but was awoken by my brother at 10:27am when he walked into my bedroom and asked, “Dude, are you ready?”  Whoops.  After loading up the car and saying goodbye to everyone, we hit the road just after 1pm.  Better late than never.

Since we wanted to stop in Nashville, our goal for the first day was to do at least 500 miles.  This would put us within striking distance of Nashville on the following day (Nashville is 800 miles from Philly), with the goal of getting into the city sometime in the late afternoon to relax, have dinner and get shit-canned.  The drive from Philly to Boston, which each of my dad, brother and I have done numerous times, is a little more than 300 miles.  So 500 miles was an ambitious goal for the first day, but not unreasonable.     

The first day of traveling, like the first round of a boxing match, is all about feeling each other out.  Despite having the same DNA, my dad, brother and I are three pretty different people who haven’t hung out much together.  Sure, I stay with my dad when I’m in Philly and I see my brother when I’m back home, but it’s one thing to make small talk and hang out for a few hours and another entirely to live every waking moment with these people in the confines of a smoke-filled Hearse.  Would we talk? (A little, sure) Would we argue? (Probably not) Would we pretty much sit in silence? (Bingo) 

As we passed quickly through Pennsylvania and Delaware and made quick work of Maryland, music was the discussion topic of choice between my dad and I, as my brother fell asleep 38 minutes into the drive.  Prior to the trip, I had spent weeks crafting iPod playlists to listen to while driving with themes like Rock, Indie, Country, Rap, Oldies and Dirt Rock (comprised of songs by Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Eagles of Death Metal, Black Sabbath, White Stripes and the Black Keys, to name a few, and subtitled “This playlist will make you HARD!”).  Of course, in the mess of the move and in the rush to get both out of NYC and then out of Philly, I forgot to get an iPod adapter for the car’s cassette player.  So we listened to local radio stations.  All day long.      

My agent Joel, who’s done the cross-country drive three times, warned me that I would hear a ton of AC/DC, Lynard Skynard and Jars of Clay on the drive, but on this day, as we barely ventured out of the mid-Atlantic region, the music was eclectic and for the most part, bearable.  As we listened, I learned many things about my dad’s taste in music, which I had previously assumed consisted only of Bad Company and Foreigner and anything you would hear in a mechanic’s shop or on comes free with those calendars of bikini-clad ladies laying over motorcycles.  It actually wasn’t so much what was said but what songs were reacted to.  For example, when Warrant’s “Heaven” came on the radio, my dad was moved enough to say “Oohh”, give a bit of fist-pump, and sing along (“Hey Now” by Tears for Fears elicited a similar response).  When telling me that “Another Brick in the Wall” was his senior prom theme (St. John Neumann, Class of ’73), “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis came on the radio, and I had to spend the better part of an hour assuring him that it was not a Mott the Hoople song (he still doesn’t believe me and probably never will).     

A few hours later as we entered Virginia, my brother, now awake, pointed out that the state has some of the highest traffic fines in the country and urged us to drive slowly.  We dismissed this as him being overly cautious; my dad, who took the first shift, sped most of the way through his leg, a trend I continued in my shift, the third one, while my brother in the middle of us topped out at maybe 66 miles per hour in his second shift.  We’re in a Lincoln Town Car, we’re a family, and we’re driving cross-country – it would be un-American to follow the speed limit.  Fucking Commie brother.      

Our first real stop, and thus our first taste of America outside of the Northeast, was at a gas station in rural, central Virginia.  I bought what I lived off the first time I did a long-distance drive (from Seattle to LA): diet coke and combos.  The woman at the cash register was probably the world’s shortest non-midget whose nametag actually read “Little Bitty.”  I paid Little Bitty for my foodstuffs, wondered what her house looked like and what she looked like when she had an orgasm, and walked back to the car, where my brother was pumping gas.  My dad followed shortly behind me out of the store flush with excitement.  He was nearly delirious when he pulled out what he had purchased: another “pretty big” knife. 

Yes, Virginia, in this state you can buy some pretty serious knives at gas stations and, though clearly in violation of the Mulgrew Weapon Treaty of 2008, my dad went and bought one for himself, a nice little vacation souvenir.  Like many dads, my dad is obsessed with knives and other weapons (wait, what?).  This is a man who carries a gun with him to poop and, say what you want about guns, but at least they’re going to get the job done.  I don’t put much faith in knives, even though they’re shiny and cool, since a knife can be dropped, a knife can be taken away, and a knife can be plunged into oneself running away from a real threat (i.e. murderer) or a perceived threat (i.e. something that sounds like a bear but is really a raccoon or perhaps just wind).  Nonetheless, the knife had been purchased and there was no way Little Biddy was going to give us a refund, so under the passenger seat it went with the first knife and the club, which is actually some sort of device used for hitting/checking tires. 

We drove onward and enjoyed the hills of Virginia, my dad happily behind the wheel.  We switched drivers every time we stopped to piss or for food, which was about every two hours or 120 miles.  Because we had three drivers, for every two hours of driving, there was four hours of sitting.  As a result, once you actually had the chance to drive, you were thrilled and wanted to open up the Beast of the Town Car on the open road and see what you could do.  Now through a rotation and having sat for four hours, my dad was driving, doing 80 in and over the hills, seeing what the Town Car, loaded to the brim and weighing roughly 16,000 pounds, was capable of.

As we came down a hill, car on fire, my dad motioned to a brushy area and said, “That’s where they usually hide.”  No sooner had he said those words than a state trooper, lights blaring, shot out from the brush and got behind us.  I looked at the speedometer and saw 78.  78 in a 70mph zone was not too bad.

Sitting idly on the shoulder of the road, the statie, who was no more than 24, walked up along the passenger side, asked how we were doing, and asked my dad why he thought he was pulled over.  “Because I was going a little fast” was his answer, to which the trooper replied a deep Southern “Yes, sir” and asked for license and registration.  After reviewing the documents, the trooper explained that we had clocked us at 82mph in a 65mph zone (I was mistaken), and that anything over 80mph in the state of Virginia is considered reckless driving.  Not only that, our windshield, according to the statie, was illegal.  See, the top of the windshield of the Hearse/Town Car is tinted (naturally).  On the windshield glass, there is a little line, one all the way on the left and one all the way on the right, 85% of the way up the windshield, that says something like “A1A.”  Any window tinting below this line, like we have in the Town Car, is illegal in Virginia.  Because that’s a law that really makes sense.  Fucking Commie Virginia lawmakers.     

This is when the pleading started.  It wasn’t so much as pleading as playing dumb, which wasn’t so much playing dumb as telling the truth.  My dad said that he had no idea about that law and had just bought the car, that we were a family driving across the country to move me to California, that we were coming down a hill and the car must have ticked up a few miles faster.  The trooper said he understand and said he’d be back in a minute.

As we sat there, we assumed that we were going to get away with a warning.  After all, it’s not like we were doing 95mph or the car smelled like pot or we were black.  While not the all-American family, my dad has not been in jail for over 20 years, I have not taken any illegal drugs in over three weeks, and my brother is a future lawyer.  This trooper seemed nice and reasonable and we’d be back on the road in no time.  Totally.

We were back on the road in no time, but not without two tickets – one for the speeding and one for the tinting – and a summons for my dad to appear in court in Pulaski County, Virginia sometime this July at 8:30am.  The statie, despite his Southern manner and kind, albeit a little crooked eyes, had dropped the fucking hammer on us.  We were stunned and before we could say anything, the trooper wished us a nice evening and walked back to his car.

My dad and I sat in the front, unmoving, me stunned, him angry.  My brother, ever quick, pulled out his phone and googled “reckless driving Virginia” and in less than thirty seconds informed us that reckless driving is a Class 1 misdemeanor - the same classification as a DUI/DWI charge – in Virginia, with penalties up to one year in jail and/or up to $2,500 in fines.  We sat for a moment longer, my dad looking at the summons in his right hand.  The summons still in hand, he turned on the ignition, shifted the car from “P” into “D”, pulled slowly back onto the highway, and said “Fuck it – I’ll never set foot in Virginia again”, crumpling up the summons and throwing it in the backseat.

Good plan, but it has only one slight problem.  The future law school of my brother Dennis?  The University of Virginia.  Oh well.  Those graduation ceremonies are always overrated anyway. 

************

Shortly after, we pulled into Marion, Virginia and ate at an Italian restaurant there.  I was up next to drive, but was so moved by how cheap the beer was - $6 pitchers (!), and a line about their cheap happy hour special, which I surmised must include paying people to drink their beer, since it doesn’t get much cheaper than $6 pitchers on a Saturday night outside of West Africa – that I had to have some beers.  My dad, who doesn’t drink, said he’d continue driving on, so after dinner we did another 30 miles or so and settled into a murder hotel in Abingdon, VA.  Exhausted, and possibly $2,500 poorer, we called it a night.  Day One of the MMCA Tour, done.